Twilight of The Oligarchs.(Russia)

Sergei Dorenko was hardly surprised when he was fired two weeks ago. The blow had been coming ever since last September, when the executives of Russia's No. 1 television network, ORT, abruptly canceled the news show he anchored and began dismissing the members of his news team, one by one. No one had any doubt why. The Kremlin was furious at his outspoken broadcasts--especially his coverage of the disastrous loss of the submarine Kursk. Now old friends and colleagues are asking what they can do for Dorenko. He advises them to keep their distance. "I don't recommend to people that they help me," he told NEWSWEEK. "I'm a lightning rod."

He'll get little solace from his former boss at ORT. One of the most powerful "oligarchs," the tycoons who dominated Russian politics while Boris Yeltsin was president, Boris Berezovsky was instrumental to the rise of Yeltsin's successor, a career KGB officer named Vladimir Putin. That was then. These days the oligarchs are losing their chokehold on power. Putin is in control, and his government seems determined to neutralize any possible challenge to his absolute authority. Putin has staged a stunning silent coup, stifling his critics and eliminating just about every serious rival. He has humbled the once mighty regional leaders and tamed Parliament. Now his loyalists are proposing a law that would shut down most political parties--and hardly anyone has objected. Many observers warn that Russia's nascent civil liberties are at risk--especially freedom of the press. "Society is sleeping," says Vladimir Ryzhkov, a centrist M.P.

The oligarchs are in retreat. Two of them have actually fled the country: Berezovsky and his onetime rival Vladimir Gusinsky, owner of the Media-Most conglomerate (which publishes the Russian-language newsmagazine Itogi in cooperation with NEWSWEEK). Unlike their fellow oligarchs, both men had major holdings in Russia's broadcast industry-- and both became targets of legal action for allegedly questionable business dealings, even as they vehemently denied any wrongdoing. Their empires have been crumbling in their absence. Last week the state- controlled gas monopoly, Gazprom, claimed to have won a decisive legal judgment against Media-Most. According to Alfred Kokh, the head of Gazprom-Media, the prize was a controlling stake in Russia's last privately owned national television station, NTV. Gusinsky insists the fight is not over.

Don't bet on it. Gusinsky is living under house arrest at a villa in Spain while the Kremlin seeks his extradition on fraud charges. Many observers think the case is politically motivated, but that may not help him in court. His troubles began in 1996, when NTV's sympathetic campaign coverage helped Yeltsin hang onto the presidency against a strong communist challenge. The government showered Media-Most with rewards: valuable transmission frequencies, cheap government credits-- even an offer from Gazprom to put up collateral for $473 million worth of loans from a Western bank.

Accepting that financing was one of the worst mistakes of Gusinsky's career. He may have compounded the error when he imagined NTV could say what it liked about Putin and even make fun of the First Lady. Gusinsky was briefly jailed last summer, accused of embezzlement in the privatization of a regional TV company. The case evaporated, and Gusinsky flew to Spain. Since then prosecutors have filed a new case, accusing him of defrauding Gazprom when it put up the collateral for the $473 million loan. Kremlin officials publicly insist the actions against Gusinsky have nothing to do with politics and everything to do with business. Privately, Kremlin sources acknowledge that the "Gusinsky problem" is all about politics.

Berezovsky followed him into exile in November. The former kingmaker antagonized Putin by balking at the president's efforts to limit the power of regional leaders (many of whom were Berezovsky allies). Then Moscow investigators began looking into Berezovsky's alleged misdeeds in connection with the national airline Aeroflot; the case remains open. Suddenly he was longing for the climate at his vacation home in Cap d'Antibes. Now his old business partner Roman Abramovich is reportedly taking over Berezovsky's properties: his shares in ORT, his interests in the oil and aluminum industries. Abramovich doesn't make trouble for Putin, and the president repays him in kind. Berezovsky, once a proponent of the "consolidation" of central power, has taken up the cause of democratic freedoms, contributing to human-rights groups and initiatives to revive Russia's comatose civil society. But few Russians seem to take him seriously.

Most of the old oligarchs, like Abramovich, want to stay on Putin's good side. They have gratefully accepted a new "social contract," as one senior Putin aide describes it: "The state has its obligations, the state has the power. Businessmen should do ...